The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

In justice, men of Athens, you should summon the men who communicated to you the promises which induced you to consent to peace. Their statements misled us; otherwise, neither would I have gone as ambassador, nor would you have ceased hostilities. Also, you should call those who, after my return from my second embassy, contradicted my report. I then protested against the abandonment of Thermopylæ and of the Phocians.

They ridiculed me as a water-drinker, and they persuaded you that Philip would cede to you Oropus and Eubœa in exchange for Amphipolis, and also that he would humble the Thebans and at his own charges cut through the Chersonese. Your anger will be excited in due time when you realise what you have hitherto disregarded, namely, that these projects on the part of Philip are devised against Athens.

Though all know it only too well, let me remind you who it was, even Æschines himself, who induced you by his persuasion to abandon Thermopylæ and Phocis. By possessing control over these, Philip now commands also the road to Attica and Peloponnesus.

Hence the present situation is this, that you must now consider, not distant affairs, but the means of defending your homes and of conducting a war in Attica, that war having become inevitable through those events, grievous though it will be to every citizen when it begins. May the gods grant that the worst fears be not fully confirmed!

III.—Athens Must Head the War

Various circumstances, men of Athens, have reduced our affairs to the worst possible state, this lamentable crisis being due mainly to the specious orators who seek rather to please you than wisely to guide you. Flattery has generated perilous complacency, and now the position is one of extreme danger. I am willing either to preserve silence, or to speak frankly, according to your disposition. Yet all may be repaired if you awaken to your duty, for Philip has not conquered you; you have simply made no real effort against him.

Strange to say, while Philip is actually seizing cities and appropriating various portions of our territory, some among us affirm that there is really no war. Thus, caution is needed in speech, for those who suggest defensive measures may afterwards be indicted for causing hostilities. Now, let those who maintain that we are at peace propose a resolution for suitable plans. But if you are invaded by an armed aggressor, who pretends to be at peace with you, what can you do but initiate measures of defence?

Both sides may profess to be at peace, and I do not demur; but it is madness to style that a condition of peace which allows Philip to subjugate all other states and then to assail you last of all. His method of proceeding is to prepare to attack you, while securing immunity from the danger of being attacked by you.

If we wait for him to declare war, we wait in vain. For he will treat us as he did the Olynthians and the Phocians. Professing to be their ally, he appropriated territories belonging to them. Do you imagine he would declare war against you before commencing operations of encroachment? Never, so long as he knows that you are willing to be deceived.

By a series of operations he has been infringing the peace: by his attempt to seize Megara, by his intervention in Eubœa, by his excursion into Thrace. I reckon that the virtual beginnings of hostilities must be dated from the day that he completed the subjugation of the Thracians. From your other orators I differ in deeming any discussion irrelevant respecting the Chersonese or Byzantium. Aid these, indeed; but let the safety of all Greece alike be the subject of your deliberations.

What I would emphasise is that to Philip have been conceded liberties of encroachment and aggression, by you first of all, such as in former days were always contested by war. He has attacked and enslaved city after city of the Greeks. You Athenians were for seventy-three years the supreme leaders in Hellas, as were the Spartans for twenty-nine years. Then after the battle of Leuctra the Thebans acquired paramount influence. But neither you nor these others ever arrogated the right to act according to your pleasure.

If you appeared to act superciliously towards any state, all the other states sided with that one which was aggrieved. Yet all the errors committed by our predecessors and by those of the Spartans during the whole of that century were trivial compared with the wrongs perpetrated by Philip during these thirteen years. Cruel has been his destruction of Olynthus, of Methone, of Apollonia, and of thirty-two cities on the borders of Thrace, and also the extermination of the Phocians. And now he domineers ruthlessly over Thessaly and Eubœa. Yet all we Greeks of various nationalities are in so abjectly miserable a condition that, instead of arranging embassies and declaring our indignation, we entrench ourselves in isolation in our several cities.